


(I'm Tied to the Track but I Don't Need You to Rescue Me) I Need You to Be the Train

by badgerling



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Iron Man 2, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:18:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5490221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badgerling/pseuds/badgerling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of one assistant, Pepper hires two - Natalie Rushman and Jamie Barnes. Natalie keeps Pepper safe, and it's up to Jamie to keep Tony Stark in one piece. Barnes is not entirely good at his job. Or all that patient with his new boss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(I'm Tied to the Track but I Don't Need You to Rescue Me) I Need You to Be the Train

**Author's Note:**

> For tumblr user [cat-solari](http://cat-solari.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Thanks Rae for the beta!

"You're dying."

That voice from behind him actually caught Tony off-guard. Of course it did. The walls in the very posh and plush Monaco bathroom were padded, and knowing the types of people that tended to use Monaco for whatever illicit and illegal things they wanted, probably soundproof as well. So it was understandable that Tony didn't hear the newcomer enter the room, close and, as Tony peered closer in the mirror, lock the door.

Jamie Barnes. The personal assistant Pepper had hired nominally because Tony needed someone to take care of the little things. But also to keep him out of trouble. And keep Tony's hands off Natalie Rushman, the assistant Pepper had hired for herself. Jamie was young, but competent.

Annoying.

Always underfoot and staring at Tony with all too familiar blue eyes.

Tony couldn't place how he knew him or where he'd seen him before. It was a niggling, annoying thing about Jamie. One of many.

"I told you to wait outside with Pepper." He blamed the medicine on why he hadn't noticed Jamie in the mirror. The first few moments after a new dose were...mind-numbing, to put it nicely. It was a nice high, and if Tony was more into dealing drugs and weapons anymore, he could think of many ways to make a decent profit off of it. As it was, it numbed his sense for a few moments, and he could be forgiven for not noticing the handsome man in the nicely tailored suit trapping him in the bathroom.

"Natalie's with Miss Potts, Mister Stark. You're my responsibility." Jamie was standing at parade rest, his hands clasped behind his back. Tony had seen Rhodey in a similar stance often enough to recognize that his very own personal annoyance had some kind of military training.

"You know, Jamie," Tony said, turning around to lean back against the counter. There were two reasons for that move. One so that he could turn and actually face Jamie, the other because leaning against the counter meant he could rest. The medicine could only help so much, and the radiation his arc reactor was pumping into his body left him exhausted once the initial high wore off. "You never did explain how someone with your military expertize ended up playing babysitter for a billionaire." Not that anyone had ever asked him, at least not when Tony had been present.

"Please stop avoiding what I said, Mister Stark." Tony could hear the strain in Jamie's voice, like he was trying too hard to be too polite.

"I asked you a question, Barnes."

"Actually you didn't," Jamie said, his fists clenching at his side as he stepped forward. "You made a comment. It didn't demand a response." Jamie shrugged. "But you are dying."

"You can't know that. You're not my doctor," and that sounded petulant even to Tony's ears, but it was true. Tony knew he was dying, he could feel it every time he had to change the reactor core. He had the medical records. There was no way for Jamie Barnes to know. Tony hadn't even shared his diagnosis with Pepper.

"You think I don't know the signs of radiation poisoning?" Jamie actually scoffed at him, which only made Tony narrow his eyes.

"You're half my age. You've never had to worry about radiation poisoning, the Cold War was over before you could probably even read."

Jamie actually looked amused at that, a smile playing across his face that Tony couldn't tell if it was sarcastic or genuine. "How old do you think I am?" Which was a weird question to ask, and Tony waved it away with a hand.

"We are not having this conversation in a Monaco bathroom. Here's…." Tony pulled a roll of money out of his pants pocket and held it out to Jamie. "However much that is. Go. Gamble. Take all of their money. Get laid. Whatever." Tony was having a hard enough time dealing with his own mortality. He didn't need someone else worrying about it too.

"My assignment is not to leave your side. Miss Potts was very clear in that regard." Jamie stepped closer, meeting Tony's eyes and not looking away. "Let me help you. I think I probably know more about this than you do."

"You can't be older than thirty. Whatever military training you have, it likely did not cover anything remotely like this," Tony said, shaking his head. He wanted to step back. Hell, he wanted to run. He wanted to be anywhere but having this conversation.

Jamie's eyes narrowed, and he reached up to loosen his tie. "You are the second most stubborn man I have ever met. Third if you count your father." Tony opened his mouth to question that statement, but before he could say a word,Jamie pulled off the tie and started to unbutton his shirt.

Tony moved then, pushing Jamie back against the wall before Jamie could open too many of those buttons on his shirt. Tony wasn't entirely sure what Jamie was implying, He likely would not be opposed to it either way, but they were having a life or death argument. A technically literal one, at that. Getting naked wasn't really the logical response. His hand stand pressed against Jamie's collarbone, fingers touching warm skin in a way that was definitely distracting. Tony wasn't paying attention to his hand, though, not even when his thumb started tracing the dip in Jamie's collarbone, not even when Jamie's breathing went shallow, and his eyelids fluttered shut for a moment.

He was distracted. And being pinned to the wall didn't stop Jamie from shoving Tony away roughly, hadn't stopped him from unbuttoning the shirt the rest of the way. He moved easily around Tony, hopping up on the counter. Tony watched him closely, his eyes following every movement, and eventually the urge to touch overcame actual sense, and Tony shoved him against the mirror harder than he should have, causing Jamie to give him a sharp exhale. He still managed to pull the shirt a little bit off his left shoulder. Jamie's right hand pressed against that shoulder, and suddenly, Tony wasn't staring at a half-dressed man.

Well, he was. But that half-dressed man now had a metal arm, a white star on the shoulder. A white star surrounded by red and blue. That made Tony blink. Why did his personal assistant have, firstly, a metal arm, a fully-functioning one at that, and secondly, why was it branded with Captain America's shield? Tony had had to stare at the shield often enough growing up, it was seared behind his eyelids.

"The first arm they built, it ran on nuclear power. I don't even know how or what exactly, they never let me remember it, but it leaked so much radiation, that the only way I survived was the serum they had pumped into me," Jamie's voice was soft and even as he spoke, but there was a fierceness in it too that made Tony tear his eyes away from the sigil on the shoulder.

He narrowed his eyes at Jamie. He had involuntarily stepped forward as Jamie was talking, he was so caught up in the arm and the brand, that he was standing dangerously close to Jamie. Staring at blue eyes that had always seemed vaguely familiar, like Tony had passed the guy on the street a few times, but now with the arm and the shield and the eyes and those words...

"James Barnes. Well, fuck me."

"No, and Bucky's fine, Stark." Gone was any attempt at being polite, but Jamie - _Bucky_ \- had never been all that subservient even when he was technically Tony's employee.

"Last thing I read said you died on a train in the Alps."

"In the gorge under the train, technically," Bucky said with a snort, "And that's also not my point. They could make me forget how the arm worked, how they fixed it, but you can't erase pain, you can't erase the feeling of everything slipping away, of barely hanging on by a thread." He stepped forward again. "I know radiation."

Tony shook his head, his eyes drawn to the arm again, but he forced himself not to stare at the shield. His focus was on where the arm met skin and the web of scars that laced over Bucky's shoulder. "I should have recognized you before. Dad made me watch those damn newsreels from the time I could hold my head up."

"Steve was the focus of those things, never me, I made sure of it." That made sense to Tony. Bucky had always been the figure in the shadows, the man with his head turned away from the camera just enough not to be noticed. While Bucky spoke, Tony's hand moved to those scars, tracing them first with his thumb then with his index finger. His touch was light. He was careful. He didn't ask permission, but Bucky didn't stop him either. When Tony looked up to say something, he found Bucky watching him, and Tony could only shrug at the other man.

Tony returned his eyes to watching the way his fingers traced the scars, and he heard Bucky sigh before he said "You need to stop changing the subject."

"I didn't say a word," Tony said.

"You're dying, and we need to deal with that fact." It was still a subject that Tony didn't want to deal with. He hadn't even wanted to talk about this with Rhodey, and Rhodey was a hell of a lot more important. He didn't even want to point out that it wasn't actually radiation poisoning, not technically. Tony shook his head, and Bucky only made a quiet, frustrated sound. "Tony-..." But Bucky didn't get a chance to say anything else because Tony finally took his hand away from the scars, that same hand coming up to cup Bucky's neck as Tony pulled him into a kiss.

Nothing earth-shattering. It was a distraction more than anything. Anything to get Bucky's mind off Tony's condition, to get Tony's mind off of the conversations he needed to have with other people but didn't really want to. His teeth caught and tugged Bucky's lower lip as he broke the kiss; that earned Tony something low and throaty from Bucky. He just wasn't sure if it was a groan or a growl. He would have asked, but even as his mouth opened to ask that question, Bucky's mouth was there.

The kiss was deeper this time, heated and hungry, but Tony still broke it with a laugh.

"Figured you out, sidekick," he said with a smirk, and Bucky narrowed his eyes at those words. Tony didn't say anything else, though, he simply ducked his head. Tony's mouth ghosted across those scars that curved over Bucky's shoulder, his hands tangling in the dress shirt, peeling it off the other man's body, baring more of his shoulder and that arm to his eyes, fingers, mouth. Bucky groaned, low and heated right against Tony's ear, and Tony had to laugh softly with his mouth against Bucky's skin.

"Stop." That was an order, and as much as Tony didn't want to listen, he did pull back slightly, not away, not completely, every breath he took was still coated with the scent of Bucky's cologne. Tony was going to have to ask what it was. Eventually. It would make a good Christmas present.

"Shoddy prosthetic," Tony said once Bucky didn't say anything else after giving that order. Bucky scoffed, but the sound was more a huff of air and a small laugh than anything. "Anyone with any talent, any real skill, wouldn't have left scars. It would have been seamless." Of course, if Tony had had a hand in designing the arm, it obviously would have done less damage.

He couldn't help but wonder if someone had attached the arm before the wound had really healed. Tony felt a pang in his heart, the feeling of his stomach dropping out from under him at the thought of that. He shook his head,pushing that thought away. It was much, much better for both of them if Tony dwelled not on Bucky's pain but on how warm and inviting he felt under Tony's hands.

"I don't think the people who gave me the arm really cared," Bucky said, and his lips quirked into something that was both sardonic and a smile at the same time. Tony leaned up, kissing the corner of Bucky's mouth. It was a spur of the moment thing, and it caught them both off-guard.

"You should let me work on it," Tony said, once again tracing the scars with his mouth. It was addictive, really. He could feel the power and the strength that was coiled in Bucky every time he moved, with every groan that vibrated through him and into Tony.

"Sh...my current employer has completely updated the arm. It's fine." Tony quirked one eyebrow at the near slip. He knew that Bucky had not innocently stumbled into a job opening at Stark Industries, Tony wasn't that lucky.

"Updated? You mean threw together a patch job on the fly. I'd remove and replace the entire thing," but Tony knew from the scars it would not be as easy as that. The arm was, most likely, not removeable. "This is, what, German tech? Soviet? From the fifties at least. It's a miracle it didn't kill you."

"Soviet," Bucky said, leaning his head back against the mirror. He was watching Tony closely, but only for a moment before he moved forward, sliding to the edge of the counter and slipping his arms around Tony's shoulders, forcing Tony to stop touching the scars. "It's not removable, you'd do more harm than good, Stark."

It was Tony's turn to make a soft sound in his throat as Bucky's fingers tangled in his hair. "I figured, but you have to let me work on it."

"You're dying. Stubbornly dying." Not that Bucky had offered an alternative, and Tony canted his head with his eyebrow lifting a little at that. Bucky sighed, pressing his lips to the underside of Tony's jaw.

"Then I deserve a project. My dying wish."

"You only get one dying wish, Stark, you might want to make better choices in that regard," but Bucky was smiling as he said that. He reached out, fingers looping through the belt loops on Tony's pants, pulling him closer, between his legs. As close as they could get while both fully clothed.

"I don't think you get to dictate how many dying wishes I get, Barnes," Tony said as he slid his hands up Bucky's side to cup the curve of his neck. He let his thumb trace the line of muscles, smiling as he let his eyes follow that movement, the smile widening as he felt Bucky's pulse jump under his thumb.

"No? Alright," Bucky said, shrugging and casting his eyes down at the floor. He was trying to act like he was surrendering, but there was no actual surrender in his tone, and Tony knew it. If anything, Bucky's grip on his hips tightened and Tony found himself pulled closer. Bucky's hips rocked up, drawing his erection over Tony's.

"Shit!" Tony said as Bucky kept up the very slight rocking of his hips. Pressure and friction and Tony was already seeing stars. Which was ridiculous. They were both fully clothed. Bucky actually laughed, whether at Tony's words or his reaction, Tony didn't know and Bucky didn't clarify.

"I don't get to dictate things?" Bucky bit his lip, smiling slightly around that expression. His fingers moved deftly, unfastening Tony's belt and pants in one movement. He grinned, quick and wide as he met Tony's eyes. He didn't ask permission as his hand slipped into Tony's pants and warm fingers wrapped around Tony's dick.

Tony couldn't help the way his hips jerked forward at that touch, thrusting into Bucky's hand. "Not fair, sidekick," he said, his voice barely above a murmur.

"Totally fair, tinman," Bucky said as he moved closer. He used his other hand, the metal one, to push Tony's pants down, freeing his erection completely. "You gotta make a choice. Either I let you mess around with the arm or you get to fuck me." Bucky shrugged though Tony was kind of beyond paying attention to the words, especially when Bucky's grip tightened. Tony's forehead rested against Bucky's shoulder as he tried to keep from thrusting too hard into Bucky's hand.

"I better get to see you naked out of this deal, sidekick," Tony said after a long moment of trying to catch his breath and swallow enough that his mouth was no longer dry. Bucky only laughed softly, his lips against Tony's ear as he did.

Tony realized why Bucky didn't say anything when he pushed Tony back just a little with his left hand while keeping up the slow, teasing stroking with his right. But only back far enough for Bucky to move off the counter and down to his knees.

"Bucky..." Tony said, not entirely sure what he was going to say, not really getting a chance to say anything before he felt the first, almost tentative touch of Bucky's tongue against the head of his cock. Then the warm wetness of Bucky's mouth, and Tony was lost. No hope of being able to do anything else.

Nothing beyond lifting his hands and tangling one in Bucky's hair while the other cupped the back of his neck. Bucky moved forward, just as slowly as he had been stroking him, taking more of him into his mouth as he did so. Tony had to bite his lip to keep from shouting at the feeling. And when he felt Bucky make soft, almost growl around the length of him, Tony bit down hard on his lip, tasting blood as he did so.

Bucky moved back up the length of Tony's dick, but Tony tightened his fingers, not willing to let Bucky pull too far away. He let his head fall forward, opening his eyes to stare down at the sight of his cock disappearing into Bucky's mouth, and that was the moment it was really driven home that he was helpless. Too lost in this feeling, this boy on his knees.

Bucky started moving faster, his hand coming up to stroke the length of Tony as he moved his mouth up the shaft, and soon enough, any resolve Tony had not to thrust into Bucky's mouth was broken. His fingers tightened, and soon enough, they had a good rhythm. Bucky moving forward as Tony thrusted, both moving back just to do it all over again.

Tony lost track of anything but the feeling of Bucky. His eyes screwed shut again, chin touching his chest, and every movement made stars burst in front of Tony's eyes. He was too close to the edge, and there was never a chance that he would keep this up forever.

When he came, he stopped thrusting, pulling Bucky tight against him, as deep as he could get as he came down Bucky's throat. He was boneless then, releasing Bucky once he was sure he was done, but Bucky wrapped an arm around Tony's waist to pull himself up to his feet. Tony slumped forward, trapping Bucky between him and the counter.

"Last wish over with, Tony?" Bucky said, his voice soft. He pressed a kiss to Tony's neck, then his jaw. Bucky's mouth was still wet and warm, and that thought made Tony groan as he pressed Bucky harder back against the counter.

"You're fooling yourself if you think I don't intend to have you on your hands and knees too, maybe not in here, but eventually." Tony grinned before he pressed his lips to the curve of Bucky's jaw.

Bucky only laughed at Tony's words, ducking his head slightly as he did. "Eventually." They were both breathing heavy, of course they were, each breath a pant, each word forced out in a huff of air. They were both half-naked, more than half, and Tony couldn't stop touching what bits of skin were visible. And it was taking all his rather miniscule restraint not to tear the finely tailored suit to shreds. Tony settled for reaching up, touching Bucky's chin and turning his head toward him.

"That's not a no," he said, lifting his eyebrows slightly.

Bucky gave another laugh, a softer one. "No. It's not a no," as he pressed himself into Tony's arms and pulled him into a kiss.

By the time Tony and Bucky left the bathroom, their clothes were, mostly, on and straight and the race was close to starting. Cars were lined up at the start, and Tony swore he could hear the revving of engines even inside the hotel restaurant. It was reckless and dangerous and it definitely would not prove to anyone that he didn't have a death wish, but he still didn't even think twice about walking through the restaurant, past Pepper and Natalie, and he ignored Bucky behind him.

"You're going to get yourself killed," Bucky said, and Tony couldn't ignore that. He turned on his heel to face Bucky, but only for a moment, just long enough to reach out, snag the man's tie and drag him forward into a kiss.

"For good luck," Tony said as the kiss broke, and as he turned to leave, he saw Natalie on her phone, probably calling Happy, but Tony was focused on the race. As he left the restaurant and the door began to close behind him, he swore he could hear Natalie saying something in Russian. It sounded a lot like a reprimand.

He'd ask Bucky about that later. Assuming he made it out in one piece.


End file.
